The Lantern Festival, which has been passed down for more than two thousand years, is the ＂carnival＂ of the Chinese nation.

　　February 9th is the traditional Lantern Festival. Folklore experts said that as one of the important traditional festivals in China, the Lantern Festival has a history of more than 2,000 years, and its excitement can be called the "carnival" of the Chinese nation.

　　Zhao Zhi Heng, an expert in Tianjin folklore, said that according to the China lunar calendar, the same date of the sun and the moon’s yellow meridian is the first day of January, when the sun, the moon and the earth are generally in a straight line. The first month is January, and the ancients called the night "Xiao". The fifteenth day of January is the first full moon night in the traditional lunar year, so it is called the Lantern Festival, also known as "Shangyuan Festival".

　　According to the folk tradition in China, on the festival night in spring returns, the moon is high in the sky, and there are thousands of lanterns on the ground. People watch lanterns, solve riddles on the lanterns, eat Yuanxiao and have a family reunion, which makes them happy.

　　Wang Sichao, a researcher at Purple Mountain Observatory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that Lantern Festival has a history of at least 2,000 years in China. Legend has it that after the Western Han Dynasty put down the "Zhulu Rebellion", Emperor Wen of Han deeply felt that peace and prosperity were hard-won, so he designated the fifteenth day of the first month of the rebellion as the day of having fun with the people.

　　Emperor Han Ming of East China advocated Buddhism. He heard that monks lit lamps to worship Buddha on the fifteenth day of the first month of Buddhism, so he ordered the palace temples to light lamps to worship Buddha that night, and ordered the gentry and ordinary people to hang lamps. Since then, the Lantern Festival has gradually formed a grand festival.

　　Folklore experts say that New Year’s Eve and the first day of the first month are traditionally celebrated by families, while the Lantern Festival is about going out of the house to have fun with the whole world, which is the only festival with "noisy" as its core content. As the saying goes, "the fifteenth day of the first month is noisy." The word "Noisy" shows the exultation and excitement of the Lantern Festival, and also shows the differences between the Lantern Festival and other festivals.

　　Folklore experts say that Lantern Festival is popular, and fireworks are also indispensable. In addition to lights, more prominent activities are all kinds of community fires, such as lion dancing, dragon lantern playing, roller boating, walking on stilts, drum beating and yangko dancing, which are played every year and are popular. The Lantern Festival can be said to be a carnival in China. Its customs and activities are more varied and colorful in traditional festivals in China.

Editor: Liu Li